


Softly, It Sings

by You_Light_The_Sky



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Ending to Season 2, Angst, Coping, Gen, Grief, John will soldier on, M/M, Magical Realism, Music feels, Piano, Post Reichenbach, Season 2 spoilers, violin, Перевод на русский | Translation in Russian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-06
Updated: 2012-08-06
Packaged: 2017-11-11 14:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,147
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/479543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/You_Light_The_Sky/pseuds/You_Light_The_Sky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can hear music in everything, from the dishes in 221B to the instruments that he touches. Then the Fall happens. Then there is silence.</p><p>Russian Translation Available</p>
            </blockquote>





	Softly, It Sings

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my tumblr (http://youlighttheskyfanfiction.tumblr.com/post/28604539787/30-days-of-writing-20-tremble) for the "30 Days of Writing" challenge. This is the only other drabble that I've written, which I really liked, so I'm sharing it. I may write a sequel to it later, with additional details to John's gift. I hope you enjoy it!
> 
>  
> 
> [ RUSSIAN TRANSLATION ](http://ficbook.net/readfic/587584)

There was an old piano in the attic that moaned with pain every time that anyone went up to move the boxes on top of it for storage. John remembers the way it used to plead for someone, anyone, to touch its keys and let the strings sound with notes once more. But instead the rickety wooden thing stood there for years on end, gather dust and more boxes until it was hidden from sight entirely.

John used to come up to play it. He used to let his fingers glide over the keys, speaking to the ghosts of the pianists before him. The piano ( _Mary, I’m Mary, kind boy_ ) used to laugh with strained tones ( _more than a few of my keys are a bit flat, son, I can’t help it if no one has taken care of me_ ) when he relived a rather bouncy jazz melody.

When he was near the piano, he was always overwhelmed by the memories of its past owners. He can play the classy dances from WWII, the ones where you twirl your partner in your arms, swishing back and forth with smiles on the dance floor ( _That was the first John Watson,_ Mary reminisces, _he was a Colonel and he died at sea_.)

Other times he is taken over by different feelings, calmer and relaxed ( _Clarence Watson, she was a paralyzed school teacher, loved to compose melodies based on rivers_ ) with no clear melody and yet it doesn’t need one. John can hear water when he plays those tunes, smooth and in sequence. His fingers tread lightly, as if they are dancing on air. He feels at peace.

Sometimes he is taken by sad and mournful tunes. Songs about love that was lost and never found again. Songs about forgotten memories. They speak to his soul and Mary never tells him who played those songs.

 _You should play your own music,_ Mary the old piano tells him. _It will sound wonderful. I know it._

He considers it, feels a thread of excitement.

He wonders what feelings he could produce, what melodies he can engrave onto this piano’s being, what things his mother might enjoy hearing. She always loves to hear him play, calls him her little musical prodigy (but John is really playing the ghosts of past musicians) and when she looks at him in those moments, there is no alcohol, no thoughts of pain. The bags under her eyes seem to disappear and she doesn’t look so faded in colour anymore. She is only looking at him.

Maybe, John thinks, he will play something just as beautiful as those before him.

-

But then his mother gets cancer.

Then his mother dies.

-

John doesn’t touch or speak to the piano after that. His father sells it to pay for the bills and because he hates looking at anything that reminds him of his late wife. John doesn’t have any power to argue, and only hopes that Mary finds a good new home.

He buries himself in schoolwork ( _should have known, should have seen the signs, the weary looks and constant gestures to her chest, should have seen it and stopped it—_ ) and tries to ignore how his father and sister seem to collapse in the same trap that his mother did.

Drink, drink, drink. They numb away their feelings until they are floating away in a false cloud of distant memories and joy. Their slurred laughter is like the slamming of multiple chords, all dissonant and wrong in his head.

John hates it.

He tries to make himself useful. In orchestra during high school, the instruments call to him, they tell him their stories. They want to be played. But he bypasses them in favour of a clarinet that has never been played before. John doesn’t play with emotion. He plays everything mechanically, according to every written scrawl on the manuscript. His clarinet doesn’t gain a personality. It remains as silent as it did the first day he picked it up.

That’s how he prefers it.

He studies his hardest to get into Medical school (hears the muffled voices of cellos from the students that carry them in their lockers, hears the cadences in the voices of his professors), only feels alive when there is adrenaline rushing through his veins, when his life is at risk. This is when he feels like he exists, when the boredom of life seems to brush away for a fleeting breeze of exuberance.

So John does the only thing he can. John goes to war.

-

In Afghanistan, nothing speaks to him except for the steady tone of gunfire, repeating the same notes again and again, always ending in screams.

-

London is silent. Every time John limps out towards the sidewalk, he can’t hear anything. Yes, there are his uneven and mismatched steps, there is his breathing, there is the sound of the taxis and traffic, of people bustling down the pavement, so deaf, so blind to the constant music speaking to them in the air. John is without a purpose and all sound has dimmed.

The silence is worse than any sound he’s ever heard before.

-

Sherlock Holmes is the most bizarre and amazing man that John Watson has ever met. Everything that the man touches—glass slides, microscopes, even Harry’s old phone—seems to tremble in response, shiver and gush out the most beautiful sounds that John has ever heard.

It’s no wonder that Baker Street is such a comfort to John. It is humming with different noises that shouldn’t mix together. The bubbling of the chemistry set, eager for the next experiment, the whining of the kettle, so abused and never taken care of, the happy groans of the sofas, eager to welcome it’s owner. Somehow the sounds mesh and become a myriad, a symphony that is so Sherlock that John cannot resist its call.

When John shoots a man for Sherlock, he feels as if he has been an instrument himself all along, just waiting to tremble in response to Sherlock’s presence.

-

The violin is off-limits.

Though it has crooned and called to John many times in sly and snide tones that are reminiscent of its owner. Sherlock keeps it hidden whenever John enters the room. When Sherlock does have his prized violin out, he hugs it close, possessively, allowing no one to come near it. John has wanted to ask to hold it, once or twice, but there is a certain intimacy between the consulting detective and the instrument which John feels he has no right to interfere with.

So he never goes near it, as curious as he is of what Sherlock feels when he plays.

And when Sherlock plays, John thinks that all of 221B seems to sing with the strings of his violin. The floorboards creak ever so slightly, the pipes seem to squeak and the dishes ring. Even when Sherlock makes the most horrible sounds and screeches just because he can, the entire flat continues to screech with him.

This is his life now, sound after sound.

-

Sherlock jumps. He doesn’t die. But he doesn’t wake up either.

-

Mycroft quickly gets rid of the remaining assassins that seem determined to try and finish off Sherlock, to pull the plug.

John shoots one of them, a man named Moran, in the head, wondering if this is what Moriarty looked like, gun to his head.

He hasn’t quite forgiven Mycroft for betraying his brother. But he is willing to work together with the man if it means making Sherlock safe.

-

It hurts to watch the silence wrap around his sleeping detective. It surrounds them both in the hospital, makes John paranoid that the silence will one day take Sherlock away forever. There will be no more beeps of the heart monitor. No longer will objects sing at Sherlock’s touch.

It will be silent.

John can’t go back to that. _He can’t._

But all he can do is watch Sherlock sleep.

-

The flat is hushed. It trembles when John steps into the living room, happy that one of her beloved boys has returned but mourning at the absence of his other half. John finds himself speaking aloud to fill the soundless voids, to give the flat _something_ to be attuned to. But he feels as unplucked, untouched and unplayed as the flat does.

What is an instrument without its musician?

-

He visits, of course. He visits every day and if it were allowed, he would practically live in Sherlock’s hospital room, just to watch for any sign of waking. But Sherlock never opens his eyes. John hears the same beeps, the same absences.

“Why did you jump, Sherlock?” John will ask. “You didn’t need to do that. I can protect myself. The world can survive without me. But not you, Sherlock. Not you.”

Sherlock Holmes makes London rise up in crescendos when he walks through his streets. He makes crime scenes tingle in response. He can get the taxis to rush out in song, makes John’s heart beat faster in the gradual prestos of madness and sanity. And John is the only witness, the only audience to it all.

What is John Watson in comparison to the man who makes his very existence hum and yell out with the cantabiles of life?

_Wake up._

He crinkles the cover of the newspaper he’s been reading aloud to his friend, just to hear _something._

_Just… wake up._

_-_

It’s by accident that John opens the violin case. He’s cleaning, using the vacuum cleaner. John cleans and uses the supplies so many times a day that the flat smells like detergent. Likely Sherlock will be annoyed at the change (if) when he returns. But it gives 221B something to sing about. It keeps the flat vibrant and alive.

John is just going over to the fireplace, feet stepping to the corners when he trips over a heavy case that has fallen from the shelves. His knee is met with hard pain and bruises and when John looks down to scold the flat, he sees Sherlock’s violin, peeking out from the confines of its case.

The violin is practically trembling with want, with need, for any hands to bring its music to life.

It’s been so long since John has heard any music from a true musical instrument that he is picking up the violin ( _Sherrinford,_ it whispers it’s name, _obviously_ ), his fingers brush against the polished wooden frame and then…

He hears it.

-

This is Sherlock playing something from Bach ( _frustrated, ink stain indicates that client was clumsy during a sexual encounter with his partner, no, no, don’t think, just play, louder, more fortissimo, need to think, facts, facts, A minor, more facts—_ )

Then Sherlock, letting any random notes run cross the strings ( _hate it, hate everything, dull, dull, dull, another dissonant chord, John says I wake up the neighbours, delete, irrelevant, let them wake, dull, dull, stupid Mycroft—_ )

A song he composed for the woman ( _betrayal, fascination, what is the password, more letters need more, what am I missing? Perhaps something about her profession, no, too obvious, not dead, she’s not dead, she’s alive and I’m the only one who knows it, who solved it—_ )

And a myriad of serenades, of nocturnes, of entire symphonies, more than a few dozen lullabies and hushed, soft harmonies all weaving together, all screaming one thing as they are played in secret when no one else haunts Baker Street.

 _John,_ he hears the echoes of Sherlock’s thoughts humming in Sherrinford. _John, John, John, John, wonderful, confusing, fascinating, John, I want, I need, I have, mine, John, for me, need, want, mine, John—_

He trembles with the violin, cradling it in his hands.

-

The next time, John visits, he brings the violin.

Slowly, the ex-army doctor lets his hand touch Sherlock’s cheek, takes comfort in watching the rise and fall of his slumbering friend’s chest.

“…I heard it, you know,” John says gently. “I heard everything. And now… I want you to hear it too. Something only I can sing.”

He plays.

It’s a clumsy effort at a transcribed and simpler version of the famous _Ave Maria_ by Schubert. His notes aren’t played at the correct tempo. Sometimes he makes mistakes with the actual sounds themselves. They are shortened or slightly strangled.

But the rise and fall of the softs and louds are his own. The carefully placed pauses where there should be none, are his. The soft way the music trickles into the room, the way that Sherrinford sighs softly in his fingers, this is something only he can create.

 _Sherlock,_ he thinks as the bow slides up towards the lights, as the trail of sounds flutters down to a deafening flutter, _Sherlock, Sherlock, Sherlock._

The consulting detective will wake again one day. And when he does, John Watson will be here, waiting with his violin.


End file.
